The Atlantic published Wednesday what it described as the ‘attack plans’ at the center of a Signal text chain leak involving senior officials in the Trump administration.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz have faced calls to resign following revelations that the outlet’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to a private group chat earlier this month in which Hegseth, Waltz, Vice President JD Vance and other top administration officials reportedly discussed impending airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Hegseth has said ‘nobody was texting war plans’ and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard vowed during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday that there was ‘no classified material’ in the messages.

‘TEAM UPDATE: TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch. 1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package). 1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s),’ Hegseth apparently wrote in a screenshot of a text message released Wednesday by The Atlantic. 

‘1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package). 1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets). 1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched,’ Hegseth reportedly continued, before adding ‘Godspeed to our Warriors.’

Waltz later allegedly wrote ‘The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,’ according to The Atlantic. 

‘Excellent,’ read a message in response attributed to Vance.

The Atlantic said in its report Wednesday – titled ‘Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal’ – that ‘the statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump – combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts – have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions.’

‘There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,’ wrote the Atlantic’s Goldberg and reporter Shane Harris. 

‘Experts have repeatedly told us that use of a Signal chat for such sensitive discussions poses a threat to national security. As a case in point, Goldberg received information on the attacks two hours before the scheduled start of the bombing of Houthi positions. If this information – particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen – had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face,’ they also said.

Vance responded to the report Wednesday by declaring that ‘It’s very clear Goldberg oversold what he had. 

‘But one thing in particular really stands out. Remember when he was attacking Ratcliffe for blowing the cover for a CIA agent? Turns out Ratcliffe was simply naming his chief of staff,’ he added.

The Atlantic report said ‘A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified.’

Waltz wrote on X ‘No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests.’

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said in response to the report that ‘The Atlantic has already abandoned their bulls— ‘war plans’ narrative, and in releasing the full chat , they concede they LIED to perpetuate yet ANOTHER hoax on the American people. What scumbags!’

‘The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans,’’ White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added. ‘This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.’

Some Congressional Democrats have been calling for Hegseth’s ouster since the text chain leak was first reported.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking Democrat to do so, wrote a letter to President Donald Trump yesterday demanding that Hegseth be ‘fired immediately.’ 

‘The so-called Secretary of Defense recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans — including the timing of a pending attack, possible strike targets and the weapons to be used –during an unclassified national security group chat that inexplicably included a reporter. His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law,’ Jeffries wrote.

Pressed by a reporter yesterday about the matter, Hegseth claimed he has everything under control.

‘Nobody’s texting war plans,’ he said. ‘I know exactly what I’m doing, exactly what we’re directing, and I’m really proud of what we accomplished, the successful missions that night and going forward.’

Fox News’ Landon Mion contributed to this report.

: Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, will hold a hearing next week on federal judges’ use of nationwide orders to throttle the Trump administration’s actions, which will take place back to back with an identical hearing in the lower chamber. 

In an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital, Grassley said, ‘District judges’ abuse of nationwide injunctions has hobbled the executive branch and raised serious questions regarding the lower courts’ appropriate jurisdictional realm.’

‘Since the courts and the executive branch are on an unsustainable collision course, Congress must step in and provide clarity,’ he explained. ‘Our hearings will explore legislative solutions to bring the balance of power back in check.’

The hearing is slated to take place on April 2, one day after the House’s hearing. 

‘We plan to have hearings starting next Tuesday on this broad subject,’ House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told ‘Fox & Friends’ on Wednesday morning.

It will be titled ‘Rule by District Judges II: Exploring Legislative Solutions to the Bipartisan Problem of Universal Injunctions.’

Specifically, the committee will look at both the constitutional and policy issues that are raised by judges issuing nationwide injunctions, particularly the uptick brought on by the Trump administration. It will further examine what harm the wide-ranging orders have posed to each branch of government, and what kind of solutions are on the table for Congress. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican majority has invited witnesses Samuel Bray and Jesse Panuccio to testify at the hearing. 

Bray is the John N. Matthews Professor of Law at Notre Dame and is an expert on nationwide injunctions. He has written and testified on the subject extensively. He notably penned a Harvard Law Review article, ‘Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction.’

Panuccio is a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner and was previously the acting associate attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as the chairman of the DOJ’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and vice chairman of the DOJ’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. He also spent time as Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s general counsel.

This is not the first time lawmakers have expressed concerns over the ability of federal judges to stop actions nationwide in their tracks. At a hearing in 2020, led by former committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., it was discussed at length by bipartisan senators. 

Several Republicans have already introduced bills in the House and Senate aimed at restricting the ability of federal judges to kneecap the administration. The president has expressed interest in one such measure, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Fox News Digital reported last week. 

According to two sources familiar with the discussions, top White House aides told senior Capitol Hill staff members last week, ‘the president wants this.’ They also said the White House felt that time was of the essence when it comes to the judicial issue and Trump wants Congress to expedite the matter. 

While the hearings have been promptly scheduled for next week, there is no word on whether legislation on the issue will be brought to the Senate floor. 

The office of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., did not provide comment to Fox News Digital when asked if he had ideas for policy regarding the injunctions, or whether he believed Congress needed to act. 

When asked by Fox News earlier this week about calls to impeach judges, Thune noted that Grassley was examining the issue and said, ‘At the end of the day, there is a process, and there’s an appeals process. And, you know, I suspect that’s ultimately how it’s going to be ended.’

During a floor speech Tuesday, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said, ‘When partisan, unelected district court judges try to micromanage the president of the United States, it isn’t judicial review. It isn’t checks and balances. It is purely partisan politics – and it is wrong.’ 

But the No. 2 Republican didn’t call for any specific legislation on the subject. 

Critics of the GOP’s cautious approach toward federal judges’ wide-ranging orders include Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who asked why bills weren’t already teed up at the start of the Congress. 

‘Congress has the authority to strip jurisdiction of the federal courts to decide these cases in the first place,’ the governor said on X earlier this month. 

‘The sabotaging of President Trump’s agenda by ‘resistance’ judges was predictable – why no jurisdiction-stripping bills tee’d up at the onset of this Congress?’ he asked. 

Sen. Josh Hawley asked FBI Director Kash Patel Wednesday to look into alleged Biden-era abuses against Christians, urging Patel in a new letter to crack down on what the Missouri Republican described as First Amendment violations he said were carried out under the Biden administration.

In the letter, previewed exclusively by Fox News Digital, the Missouri Republican asked Patel to investigate alleged abuses against pro-life activists and Christians. He also urged Patel to release by April 30 information compiled by the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office – including a memo that labeled certain traditionalist Catholics as potential ‘security risks’ – and to address possible violations of the FACE Act, which Hawley said targeted pro-life protesters.

‘I trust that, under your leadership, this misconduct will end. But those responsible must be held accountable,’ Hawley said in the letter. 

‘Transparency and accountability will be paramount in restoring Americans’ faith in the Bureau,’ he added. ‘Getting to the bottom of the Biden Administration’s violations of religious liberty is an excellent place to start.’

The letter from Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, is not the first time he has used his post to urge Patel to protect against Christian persecution. 

Hawley’s letter calls on the FBI to share with his office by the end of April a list of 22 memos and documents compiled by the FBI Richmond Field Office and related to the alleged FACE Act abuses, including all emails, memoranda, directives and policy guidance, sent to or from the FBI director, deputy director, or any other senior official regarding the enforcement of the FACE Act under the Biden Administration. 

Hawley also urged Patel to share all documents – including communications with state and local law enforcement agencies – that discuss how the Richmond Field Office memorandum or similar FBI policies were implemented or considered for enforcement at the state or local level.

Hawley zeroed in on these issues during Patel’s confirmation hearing earlier this year.

‘Do you think it’s appropriate for the FBI to single out and target people of faith in order to discourage the exercise of their First Amendment rights?’ he asked Patel in January. 

Patel vowed in response that he would ‘fully utilize, if confirmed, the investigative powers of the FBI to give you the information you require and also to hold those accountable who violated the sacred trust placed upon the FBI.’

The leak of Houthi strike plans by the Trump administration to a journalist was not the result of a hack but an apparent human error. Still, it sparked debate over whether the nation’s most powerful government officials should communicate sensitive military information on a non-government platform. 

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, wrote on Monday that he was added to a group chat on Signal on March 11 by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz titled ‘Houthi PC small group.’ His article details a leaked conversation between the nation’s top government officials, including the vice president, secretary of defense, director of the CIA and others, in which the sensitive details of a planned strike on Houthi terrorists in Yemen were reportedly discussed. 

The report shocked Washington and led to accusations from Democrats and others that President Donald Trump’s team endangered national security and possibly violated the law by using Signal, a messaging app. Signal’s platform is encrypted, but that doesn’t mean it is not susceptible to hacks, experts told Fox News Digital.

Encryption means that only the sender and the receiver of a message should be able to review it; not even Signal itself can pull its contents. But even without viewing a message’s contents, some metadata might be attainable.

‘Knowing who has spoken with whom at what time and for what duration is already very useful intelligence,’ said Vahid Behzadan, cybersecurity professor and researcher at the University of New Haven. 

‘If a phone is infected with spyware, messages can be intercepted before or after encryption.’

‘Screenshots or photos are not protected by Signal itself … and if previews are enabled by users in the app, sensitive info could appear on a locked screen,’ he said. 

Government officials and journalists often use Signal to communicate sensitive information for fear that emails and text communications on official government cellphones could fall under the Freedom of Information Act, meaning they could be made public. However, transmitting controlled but unclassified information on Signal is explicitly banned by Defense Department policy.

In February, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group warned of ‘increasing efforts from several Russia-aligned actors to compromise Signal accounts used by individuals of interest to Russia’s intelligence services.’ 

‘While this emerging operational interest has likely been sparked by wartime demands to gain access to sensitive government and military communications in the context of Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine, we anticipate the tactics and methods used to target Signal will grow in prevalence in the near-term and proliferate to additional threat actors and regions outside the Ukrainian theater of war,’ Google said. 

Google warned that Signal could obtain access to all of a target’s information on their phone while their device is unlocked. 

‘As reflected in wide-ranging efforts to compromise Signal accounts, this threat to secure messaging applications is not limited to remote cyber operations such as phishing and malware delivery, but also critically includes close-access operations where a threat actor can secure brief access to a target’s unlocked device.’

At first, Goldberg said, he worried that the Signal chat was fake. 

But shortly thereafter, top names in the administration, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, began naming their points of contact for the impending offensive campaign in Yemen against the Houthis, according to The Atlantic. 

The group then reportedly began to use the chat for coordinating messaging plans as the administration moved closer to its offensive campaign, which was made public on March 14. 

The Trump administration has insisted no one shared classified information in the ‘Houthi PC small group’ chat. 

Ratcliffe said he’d been briefed by the agency about the ‘permissible work use’ of Signal. 

But Goldberg said the chat ‘contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.’ He redacted some of the information he deemed potentially sensitive, including the name of a CIA agent who Ratcliffe had named to run point on the strikes.

Ratcliffe said it was not improper for him to share the officer’s name because he was not under active cover.

Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard said they could not recall whether specific weapons systems or specific targets had been mentioned in the Signal chat during a Senate worldwide threats hearing on Tuesday. 

When asked whether Hegseth had declassified information about the Houthi operations before sharing it in the chat, they referred senators to the Defense Department. 

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a national security hawk, isn’t buying that the chat did not reveal classified information. 

‘I will guarantee you 99.99% with confidence Russia and China are monitoring those two phones,’ Bacon said of the chat. 

‘This is a gross error, and it’s intentional. They intentionally put highly classified information on an unclassified device. I would have lost my security clearance in the Air Force for this and for a lot less.’

Matthew Shoemaker, a former defense intelligence official, said sharing classified information on Signal would violate Title 18 of U.S. Code 793, which bans gathering, transmitting or losing defense information. The punishment for such a crime carries up to 10 years in prison.

‘They had to physically remove it from a classified system and then put it on an unclassified system,’ he said. ‘Any uniformed officer would immediately be relieved of command.’

‘It’s hard to believe this is the first time they’ve been doing this. It’s likely just the first time they’ve been caught.’ 

On top of it all, Shoemaker said, White House envoy Steve Witkoff, who was a part of the chat, was in Russia on Russian-operated cell networks at the time the strike information was being communicated to him.

‘Given the Russian GRU’s past activity breaking into Signal, it’s highly likely the Russians saw everything.’

He said that any conversations about the timing of the strike, assets used or weapons is all strike package information that is ‘highly classified, likely at the top secret level.’

‘I’m sure the targeting intelligence officers would be very surprised to learn their work is actually unclassified, if what Pete Hegseth is saying were true.’

The threat of hacking the chat would depend on whether officials were using their government phones with extra layers of encryption or personal devices, according to James Robbins, dean of academics at the Institute of World Politics and former advisor to the late Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

‘I think we can assume that any government-issued phone to somebody at a Cabinet level would have all kinds of safeguards preinstalled,’ he said. 

He said the fact that Witkoff was in Russia did not mean he ‘was plugging into a Russian Wi-Fi.’ 

‘Things get communicated from our foreign embassies and foreign locations all the time. That doesn’t mean it goes over a foreign network.’

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., temporarily blocked the shutdown of a U.S.-funded radio network. 

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, granted a temporary restraining order on the shutdown of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a non-profit news organization originally founded in the 1950s by the Central Intelligence Agency to broadcast behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. 

Congress later began funding RFE/RL in the 1970s to promote democracy across the globe. 

The judge found Kari Lake, the longtime Arizona broadcaster and unsuccessful gubernatorial and Senate candidate tapped to oversee the U.S. Agency for Global Media, likely violated federal law in moving to slash RFE/RFL’s funding in line with President Donald Trump’s agenda to eliminate government waste. 

The U.S. Agency for Global Media houses Radio Free Europe and Asia, as well as Voice of America and Radio Marti in Cuba. 

‘RFE/RL has, for decades, operated as one of the organizations that Congress has statutorily designated to carry out this policy,’ Lamberth wrote. ‘The leadership of USAGM cannot, with one sentence of reasoning offering virtually no explanation, force RFE/RL to shut down—even if the President has told them to do so.’

Trump signed an executive order earlier this month aimed at dismantling U.S.-funded media organizations. A senior White House official told Fox News Digital at the time that Voice of America ‘has been out of step with America for years.’

‘It serves as the Voice for Radical America and has pushed divisive propaganda for years now,’ the official said. 

The executive order, which targets seven offices, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said ‘non-statutory components and functions of the following governmental entities shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, and such entities shall reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.’ 

RFE/RFL sued in federal court, saying that the administration immediately froze nearly $7.5 million in funding already appropriated by Congress. The Justice Department wrote in court documents on Monday that the disbursement was underway and proof of payment would come by Wednesday. 

Voice of America Director Michael Abramowitz wrote on X that ‘virtually’ the whole 1300-person staff was placed on leave. 

In a court hearing Monday, Justice Department lawyer Abby Stout argued that RFE/RL has no grounds for a restraining order given the U.S. government would disburse the nearly $7.5 million. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Thomas Brugato, said the disbursement was only a temporary fix and the non-profit could expect widespread layoffs and to close by April if funding doesn’t continue.

‘It’s really a Band-Aid,’ Brugato said in court, according to The Hill. 

In his order, Lamberth said RFE/RL ‘was originally conceived of in the 1950s as a vehicle for providing trustworthy, locally relevant news to audiences subject to communist propaganda.’ 

‘Since its inception, RFE/RL has continued to expand, responding to threats to democracy and media freedom across the globe,’ the judge wrote, later concluding, ‘The Court concludes, in keeping with Congress’s longstanding determination, that the continued operation of RFE/RL is in the public interest.’

Separately, a lawsuit was brought Friday by Voice of America reporters, Reporters Without Borders and a handful of unions in U.S. District Court in New York against the U.S. Agency for Global Media and Kari Lake over efforts to shut them down. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.